New York Times: Trump wrong about readership

The New York Times on Sunday pushed back against President-elect Donald Trump’s claim that it has lost thousands of subscribers and said that in fact it has seen a surge in digital subscriptions.

At 9:16 a.m. Sunday, @realDonaldTrump tweeted: “Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the ‘Trump phenomena.”’

But the Times told POLITICO that when factoring in cancellations, it has, since Election Day, added four times the average number of net new digital and print subscriptions, spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said in an email.

Since the Times releases subscription numbers on a quarterly basis, she declined to share the number of cancellations or specific subscription numbers but did say it has seen “far more starts than stops.”

The Times’ publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, told the newsroom in an email on Friday that Trump would be covered “fairly” and “without bias.”

Sulzberger and editor Dean Baquet also on Friday emailed subscribers saying: “After such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions: Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?” They also asked for the “loyalty” of readers to “deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known.”